Archive for July, 2006
July 14th, 2006
Posted in Indu$try, Opinion
Skateboard or Sell Skateboard Shit
On a tour with Ron Allen a long time ago… Ron had writing on his griptape. He was riding for H-Street at the time and he was traveling around the country skating demos and shit in some of the smallest towns in the USA.
“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge”
That’s what Ron wrote on his griptape in 1989. We discussed the shoes that Nike was putting on the market for Skateboarding back then… In a tiny ass town in Ohio… In between taking turns trying a 9 stair handrail.
One of the kids watching us had a pair of those pink Nike Skateboard shoes on and he commented on how we might want to try tightening the laces on our shoes… We both looked at the kid and didn’t say anything.
We both landed the next try and skated away from the rail and didn’t stop or even look back at that kid with those shoes on. That kid didn’t follow us and all the other kids that were watching instead of Skateboarding didn’t follow us either.
They witnessed.
Fast Forward to now…
There is a sort of verbal agreement in the Skateboard Indu$try regarding retail accounts and a no-compete within a 10 mile radius. Zumiez is about to open within the 10 mile radius of a lot of Skateshops this year and we mean A LOT. Check out their site and look at the list of brands that zumiez carries and you will see that almost every company that supposedly lives by the 10 mile rule is available at Zumiez. Except one company. Yep… Nike SB is standing by the 10 mile rule. Consolidated isn’t up there yet.
How smart is that? Trick all the Skateshop owners into thinking that Nike SB is on their side when they feel like everyone else completely left them for the almighty dollar.
Final thought: This just isn’t right at all
Skate Everything Faster…
Support your local shop
July 6th, 2006
Posted in Indu$try, Opinion
Adbusters and Nike Skateboarding
As Moish Brennan, art director for Consolidated Skateboards, put it…
Nike is a huge multimillion dollar corporation that never gave a shit about skateboarding. The jocks who used to beat me up for skating wore Nikes and now Nike wants to be in with skaters? Uh-uh. It’s not going to happen. We’ve had to fight and scrimp and save, and it wasn’t so giant corporations could come along and buy their way in.